Our Aims and Objectives
We are the UK association for all those who research, study and teach global development issues
Find Out MorePhD students were invited to apply for one of 15 places to participate in a Masterclass preceding the DSA2024 conference, where they will receive expert feedback on their PhD project and key issues emanating from their work.
They were required to submit a long abstract (up to 500 words) briefly outlining their PhD project and the key challenge to focus on (for example, gender and development, methodologies such as decolonising development, labour, work and precarity, international organisations and agenda setting, environment and climate change).
Application process
Deadline for applications: 8 April, 2024
All those wishing to participate in the PhD Masterclass MUST also register and pay to attend the DSA2024 conference. As PhD students you are eligible to apply for funding to assist with registration and participation costs at the conference. The call for funding closes on 9th March – you can apply via our website before you receive the decision on your Masterclass application.
The preferred format for the Masterclasses is face-to-face sessions, so we hope all successful applicants can attend the Masterclasses and the conference in person. If this is not possible and you can only attend online, please email the conference organisers to let them know.
Applicants will be notified by 28 April with the committee’s decision.
The masterclass sessions are highly popular and demand exceeds the number of places available. The DSA regrets that not everyone who applies will be allocated a place and priority will be given to those applicants whose work aligns closely with the conference theme.
Each successful applicant will have 45 minutes allocated to them in the Masterclass.
This time will be used to give a short presentation (10 mins), engage with feedback from a discussant (5 mins) and participate in a more general discussion around the issues raised. The aim is for participants to receive excellent, focused feedback, from the experts/discussants and audience members, but also to highlight issues that may be common to other researchers in the audience so we can collectively consider how to address them.
Five sessions will run in parallel from 10:00 – 13:00 on the morning of June 25, chaired by members of the committee that selected the abstracts. Successful applicants must submit a four page paper by June 4, 2024 expanding on their abstract for the discussants to comment on and to share with people attending the Masterclass ahead of the conference.
Experts and discussants will be leading academics who are part of the DSA and/or part of the ESRC UBEL Doctoral Training Partnership.